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FASCINATING study of how much Arsenal’s squad is worth in comparison…

BOOM!(only joking) – Arsenal squad value revealed! by JS

I saw a brilliant article on another Arsenal forum that looked at a study produced by the Football Observatory site in which various player attributes are combined to work out the worth of the players, and these values are then aggregated to provide a valuation for the whole squad.

I reviewed the study myself but I have lazily followed the format of the article from Untold Arsenal, but have added a little of my own commentary. I thought it would provoke a bit of banter and give us a break from “transfer window fever”. For the astute amongst you it will be clear that the findings of this study will provide great ammunition for both the AOB and AKB factions – so everyone is a winner.

My personal over-arching conclusions are two-fold. Firstly that PL teams (not just Arsenal) are hugely under-performing in the UCL, but I do wonder how much the over-valuation of the British contingent is skewing the figures, put simply, all things being equal, a £20M British player is not as good as a £20M non-British player. My second conclusion is that Arsenal must be quite smooth operators in the transfer market and fairly smart in building squads – certainly from a business perspective (whether we have the right players to win things is a separate argument). The Arsenal squad actually cost around £200M, so a £336M valuation is not a bad return. By way of comparison, Chelsea’s squad cost around £380M.

The study also looks at the correlation between league position and squad value and perhaps not unsurprisingly finds that the top 4/5/6/7 places are taken up with the top 4/5/6/7 highest value squads in all the major leagues with very few exceptions. (I assume someone, somewhere will merge the squad valuation, transfer spend and wage bill data to provide one killer correlation statistical tool – I have not seen one to date. The correlations are shown to be strong already, we may get to the stage with even better predictive data where we may not then even have to play the season out – we will know in advance!) For anyone still wondering about the relative competitiveness of the PL and La Liga, Chelsea (PL champions 2014-15) has a squad valuation approximately 15.5 times that of Burnley (bottom placed team 2014-15). Barcelona has a valuation 77 times that of Cordoba!! 70% of the total value of the PL teams is tied up in the top 7. 70% of La Liga total value is tied up in the top 5 teams. Case closed really.

Anyhow, the individual player’s estimated market value takes in to account six main criteria:

age
position
contract
international status
experience
performance

And then adding in three team criteria:

competition
results
achievements

This gives players’ notional values. I am not sure anyone is saying that each value is what the player will be sold for – because of course most of these players are not going to be sold, but even so it gives a bit of an insight.

I am not going to interpret or comment on this list here – but there are quite a few gobsmacking elements that maybe some of you will comment on rather than me leading the way. I am not going to make a case for how accurate or valid these valuations are but on the face of it the criteria is consistently applied throughout. Teams with maybe better players but with high average ages and perhaps many players near the end of their contracts will suffer by comparison – Man City is an obvious example. So who are the players who give us this valuation? In the table below the first number is the position of the player in the top 100 most valuable players. The figure in brackets is the date of the end of the contract and the figure at the end the estimated value. We can argue all day and all night about the accuracy but hey, that is what it is all about.

It reflects value, which is largely subjective, not quality. So really it’s meaningless unless you look at it as a measure of investment, how much value for money we have got. Best example of it for Arsenal is Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain. Our third most valuable player apparently, but far from being our third best. He just has fantastic potential and is still young, so has a high value as he’ll last longer. Curious how Özil’s value has fallen by £20m in under 2 years though. I think he is easily a £30m player at the minimum, even to the Michael Owen’s of the world. He’s still only 26 too, odd how he’s only rated a £25m player.

Actually scrap all that, these rankings are a load of rubbish. Eden Hazard the second most valuable player in the world and worth £100m? What a joke. He scored 12 goals in the league this season, that’s it.. Gareth Bale scored 20 from the wing before he was flogged to Madrid, now apparently he’s only worth £40m. So what if Hazard is only 24? He’s scored 20 goals in all competitions this season. Neymar is only 23 and has scored over 40 goals this season, yet apparently he’s worth £30m less? Utter nonsense.

Plus there’s a load of other ridiculous ones. Apparently Raheem Sterling is worth £60m? Honestly… And my pick of the bunch – Phillipe Coutinho is worth £40m whilst Mesut Özil is only worth £25m. Even Eriksen is worth £30m according to these loons.

Smart signings
smart management?
But is it more than that?
In the EPL before
the season starts
we know only 4 teams can win.
Its worse in Spain and only one team
wins in Italy and Germany.
Apparently evening out the teams
is not wise as FIFA has relaxed the FIFP rules.
Competition is bad for the game it seems.
17th and 6th are celebrated as wildly as those who win.
Its like all teams know their place.
What is Arsenals true place?

It’s all about money of course. And money is determined by two things – the fan base, and the owners. Like you said. In the Premier League, 4 teams can win, and Arsenal is one of them. That’s our place. But Arsenal have lost a massive amount of ground over the past few years by not competing for the league. It’s hurt our brand, so we get less money and are less able to compete. Hopefully that will change next season.

Also on the FFP rules, it’s funny how the reasoning behind essentially scrapping them was because the Premier League TV deal would have given English teams an advantage in the Champions League. I mean, the way Real Madrid and Barcelona have gotten their TV money has given them a massive advantage on the rest of Europe for years, but no one said a word then… But now that it’s the English teams it’s suddenly a big deal.